The Internet has made it increasingly easy for consumers to conduct transaction with merchants. The globalization of the economy facilitated by online transactions allows a consumer in one country to conduct transactions in countries throughout the world. Similarly, merchants are able to more easily and freely maintain presences in multiple countries.
For example, a user from the United States may conduct transactions at one or more of merchant's websites based in England, Japan, and the United States. These transaction may be conducted either over the Internet through separate merchant websites dedicated to each country, or while physically present at the foreign merchant locations. However, allowing consumers to conduct transactions with multiple websites linked to a single merchant may increase the risk to the merchant of suffering from fraudulent transactions. Increased risk and challenges may include a greater difficulty in determining which transactions are legitimate and which transactions are fraudulent, as well as whether the user is a legitimate consumer or a fraudster. Fraud is a significant issue for merchants, as it can cost merchants substantial amounts of money in the form of both lost revenue and lost stock.
Merchants with presences in multiple countries have the increased difficultly of reviewing transactions from each country in order to determine whether fraudulent activity has occurred. This is because in many cases, each country will conduct and process transactions in its local currency. Some systems today can include rules that evaluate transactions and assist merchants in deciding whether a specific transaction should be accepted or rejected.
New and enhanced methods of detecting fraudulent activity have become increasingly necessary to provide greater security and functionality to globalized merchants.
Embodiments of the invention address the above problems and other problems, individually and collectively.